As we plunge ahead with 18 smallish items remaining before getting a very small circle of folks using the very raw site functionality as-is, it probably bears commenting on why we’re choosing to do development this way – iterating in ever-wider circles of functionality, polish, and users.
The reason is that we both believe in this:
“Only slightly more than 30% of the code developed in application software development ever gets used as intended by end-users. The reason for this statistic may be a result of developers not understanding what their users need.”
– Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, “Contextual Design: A Customer-Centric Approach to Systems Design,” ACM Interactions, Sep+Oct, 1997, iv.5, p. 62.
And this:
(see slides 20-23)
Finally, our meta-goal for release cycles is:
“If you aren’t embarrassed, you waited too long to release.” – Dharmesh Shah / Kent Beck (not sure of the attribution)
Luckily, at the moment, there’s no fear of us not being embarrassed ;)
